The high temperature today was 108 degrees and we sat outside from 10:30 this morning until 2:30 this afternoon. We were attending a funeral in the village of Nalongni. This was one of the annual group funerals. The village was performing the final funerals for around 40 of their family members that died in the past couple years. The village had lots of cattle tied ready to be slaughtered. The meat will be shared with the people that attend the funeral. People go from house to house with their plastic bags collecting meat (raw meat). It is sort of like trick or treat with meat instead of candy. We were given a plastic bag of meat which we re-gifted to Timothy. He was happy to get it. Last night and today were the days for the “Christian” funerals. I say Christian very loosely. Tonight and the next 2 days will be for the traditional pagan funerals. Steve was asked to preach today. It was very hot but at least we were sitting under some shade trees. I was sitting with the women. They had a huge speaker system which was run by a generator that gave me a headache. At first I was sitting in front of the loud speaker but I moved behind it.
I did not go with Steve and Timothy when they went to the funeral because I was waiting on some of the church members to come and sign their paper work. I was not even sure that I would get to attend the funeral but the men came early. I left as soon as the men finished doing the paper work. I actually got to the funeral grounds before the funeral started. When I arrived I found Steve and Timothy at Brother Joseph Kumasi’s house eating an early lunch of Tz and okra stew. If you remember Kumasi was the man that had a stroke several months ago. His speech is much improved but he still does not have much use of his arm and leg. We noticed that he has some sores on his bad leg. He probably hurt it without knowing it.
After the service they gave us take-away containers of rice and tomato stew for lunch. Once again the food was re-gifted. Timothy made out like a bandit today.
Later this afternoon we went out to the village of Borido to meet with the church members and to get them to sign their portion of the paper work. We had been trying to get hold of them for a couple days. We found out that Bro. Foster’s phone was not working and that he has a booth at the market in Gnani. He came back from the market to meet with us and he was going to go back after he signed the papers.
The man from Tamale came today to do the inspection on the property. We were surprised that he came on Saturday. He said that he had not expected to come today. We gave him a little something extra for coming out on his day off. He has no idea when the report will be ready for us to pick up.
Thank you for all you do!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
